We all live in a society in which we have confused the "have" with the "being", to the point that seems to be superior one who has a better car or a checking account with more zeros. Children, our children, of course, end up copying our behaviors (even the wrong ones) and end up becoming us, in many ways.
One of the aspects in which they fall, both because of our fault and because of the industry, is in the belief that having more things will be happier. And who actively seeks happiness? Well, people who are not, or children who are not. A study in the Netherlands wanted to show that the most unhappy children are more materialistic and, as the thing can be even worse, that those who are more materialistic end up being more unhappy.
How did they do the study
Researchers from the Faculty of Communications Research at the University of Amsterdam took a sample of 466 boys and girls between 8 and 11 years old and did two separate surveys for a period of one year. They were asked about their material assets, their satisfaction in life and about advertising.
They did the latter because they wanted to see how marketing, how ads, could interfere with children's emotional health. They realized that relatively unhappy children were more materialistic than happier children, and observed that children who were exposed to television ads were even more so.
The silly box, the stunning box
It is obvious, look at the happy face that children have in television commercials, face that they put even when the toy they play with is a real hit. The children see them, they see their happy faces, they see how they enjoy, they see how they play with colorful objects that move to the rhythm of a catchy music and immediately they want to be like them and feel the same emotions To be equally happy.
Given that children can see between 10,000 annual ads (in Great Britain in 2007) and 40,000 (in the US in 2001), the logical thing is that they end up asking for many of the things they see.
However, as you know, the happiness that gives something material is ephemeral. It lasts a few days, sometimes a few hours and sometimes it doesn't even last, because many children open the desired object and realize that the ad seemed cooler and more fun.
And yet they sting again and again, perhaps because they have no other and perhaps because parents tend to strengthen it. Guilty, that's how we feel about not spending our time with our children and, before that, we end up giving up many times and even buying when they don't ask for it. "I feel so guilty, it is so much time that I should have spent with you that I reflect my penance in the size of your gift, or in the number of objects." So children end up having everything in large numbers and yet they remain unhappy, because still need more. Always more.
Suzanna Opree, author of the study said the following:
Previous studies among adults not only indicate that people with lower life satisfaction become more materialistic, but also that more materialistic people become less satisfied with their lives ... Therefore, although we do not find any short-term effect (after one year ), the materialism of children is likely to lead to less vital satisfaction at an older age.
The more materialistic, the more unhappy
The authors commented, as you see, that in view of the results and seeing studies conducted with adults the more materialistic an older child is the risk that in adulthood he will be more unhappy. An adult who is still worried about appeasing his bad feelings, looking for things that make him feel good, an adult who needs to constantly reward himself with things, is a person who will hardly get out of that spiral, because in his scale of values it is important to get every time more things.
And things, as we have said above, are new and bring a false sense of happiness precisely when they are new. At the moment it ceases to be, when a few days or weeks have passed, new needs and renewed desire appear to buy more things, even to replace those that were bought a few weeks ago. As all this entails a fairly continuous expenditure of money and the impossibility many times of being able to buy everything that one would like appears frustration. A less materialistic person, on the other hand, does not live with such urgency or anxiety the renewal of things nor does it depend on them to feel better.
As one wise phrase says: "The world will improve when people worry more for being than for having".
